About the Episode
In this episode of Whole by Design, Robyn Brickel, an expert in trauma-informed clinical work, sheds light on how we are all built for survival. Robyn explores how healing deep-rooted wounds can lead to healthier connections, improved emotional regulation, and a more peaceful life. Tune in for valuable insights on recognizing trauma’s impact and practical steps for healing that can transform the way you relate to yourself and others.
Episode Guest
Robyn Brickel, M.A., LMFT is founder and clinical director of Brickel and Associates, LLC in Old Town, Alexandria, Virginia. She and her team bring a strengths-based, trauma-informed, systems approach to the treatment of mood disorders, addiction, trauma, self-harm, eating disorders, perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, and other mental health conditions. She is deeply committed to clinical practice, professional education and better public awareness of mental health issues. Robyn is a writer who regularly blogs about trauma and trauma-informed care.
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Episode Transcript
Welcome and Introduction
Julie: Hi, everyone. On this week’s episode, we will be diving into the way that our bodies are built for survival. And I wanna have you stay until the end when Robyn is gonna talk about the main reason why people get into therapy in the first place and what you can do about that.
Today, I’d like to welcome Robyn Brickel, who is an expert in trauma-informed clinical work. She is the owner and founder of Brickel and Associates, where she leads her team to do amazing transformational work with people who are working through all their trauma symptoms and reclaiming their lives. Before we jump in, don’t forget to check out our website, www.vivapartnership.com, for free and low-cost resources that can change your life. Thanks for joining us, Robyn.
Robyn: Thanks, Julie, for having me. It’s always exciting to sit and talk to you.
Julie: I love talking to you because you are just a full treasure trove of wealth. And I’m especially excited to talk about the way that our bodies are built and how amazing they are and how they’re specifically built for survival.
Robyn: Yeah, I think talking about trauma for the two of us and the approach to our bodies and our brains, having everything that we need to survive and take care of us on the path forward is a wonderful conversation. I look forward to it.
How the Body Adapts to Trauma
Julie: Oh, yes, totally. And of course, as our paths have crossed many times over the last, I don’t know, many decades, I know we’re very aligned in this idea that our bodies really do have a whole treasure trove of automatic resources that help us get through even the hardest of moments. Tell me a little bit about how you see that happening and what you see as people come to you at your center.
Robyn: Sure, I think that when people experience trauma, especially at a young age, they learn to adapt. They learn to develop in ways that attempt to keep them safe, attempts to keep them surviving. And that can look like hypervigilance in adulthood, that can look like hypoarousal, where they just check out and are numb and don’t really feel the world around them.
And I think that most of the people that we deal with, though, come to the table with some sense of hypervigilance because that was what kept them safe, right? They kept aware, they kept listening, they kept trying to read your face and your body language. And so they found ways to try and limit the pain and the danger in their life.
And so I think that that just follows through, right? When you develop those coping skills and survival strategies at such a young age, it becomes part of who you are. Becomes part of what you do all day, every day. And there are amazing strengths that come with that. And at times, there are reminders of how maybe you don’t need those coping skills in adulthood anymore. Maybe life is different.
When Survival Strategies No Longer Serve Us
Julie: Yeah, and so you said something really important. Which is that when life gets overwhelming, our bodies just automatically do these things to keep us safe. And maybe you were making a little bit of a distinction between what that might look like in childhood, if that’s when the trauma occurred. Of course, trauma can happen in adulthood as well, but it started sounding like you were talking about how some of the things that we do that might work perfectly well to help us get through a really challenging conversation may no longer work in future chapters as we move forward. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?
Robyn: Sure, I think that, right, lots of times it’s people making assumptions of what’s going to happen. They attempt to keep quiet, be invisible, try and have some sense of control, try and manage the scenarios. If only I know everything that everyone’s doing, I can keep people safe.
And when kids do that, it’s listening skills, it’s heightened awareness, it’s being quiet or being the comedian, right? It’s the person who tries to change the room. And when that happens, when you continue those skills throughout your life because you learn that you need them, right? You need them to survive life or death.
And in adulthood, when you find yourself in safer relationships, when somehow new relationships occur, whether it’s friendships or romantic relationships or even work environments, right? You find that maybe people are actually listening to you. Maybe the environment is safe. And yet the response that a trauma survivor might bring to the table is much larger than could be necessary for that moment. And then sometimes it becomes confusing in those relationships.
Julie: Yeah, right. So it’s no longer useful anymore.
Robyn: It no longer serves them in the same way that it did, right? When they were younger, it served or it felt like it served for a purpose of good, of survival, right? The best it could possibly be. And in adulthood, it might mean that partners are confused, right? Colleagues are confused. How did you get from point A to point B, right? How did you get there? And the amount of survival that you need in those relationships is more limited, right? It’s like putting on full blast when you really only need to turn the dial up a notch or two.
The Role of Safe Relationships in Healing
Julie: And so how do you end up helping people readjust to what the present day offers as opposed to having it on full blast, being able to kind of down tick like the amount of destruction or entertainment or hypervigilance or whatever.
Robyn: Right, so usually when people come into either of our offices, they a lot of times don’t know why something’s not going the way they want it to. It just isn’t, right? “I want to feel better“, “I want to do relationships differently“, “I don’t know how this is happening“.
And so a lot of the work in the beginning is what we call sort of grounding to the present day. Right, what’s going on right here, right now? What can you notice, right? How can you just notice from your feet forward? How can you see what’s going on when you look around the room? Is there danger currently? How do you know? How do you know if, right, the amygdala part of the brain, the smoke alarm has to go off or not, right? What is the trigger for that? Is it something that’s happening currently or is it something that used to happen? There’s a sliver of familiarity. And so that feels different or sets off that emotion, right?
So present day, building, grounding, understanding what’s going on around you, and building the relationship in therapy is important, right? A lot of our clients have never had safe relationships. They’ve never had places where they feel heard or seen or safe. And so building that sometimes in the therapeutic relationship, right, is so healing and reparative. And at the same time, it also starts that healing process at times toward grief as well, right? When you feel a different feeling, when you feel safe, when you feel cared for, it’s possible you start to notice times maybe where that wasn’t the case and how hard that is.
Julie: Yeah. And so in my experience, that has actually helped people lessen their load, right? Because they’re holding the grief anyway. It’s just this provides an opening, and having some of that leave being stuck in their system actually leads to feeling better in the present day.
Robyn: Right, I mean, there’s so much a lot of times that’s kept, that’s capped off inside of a trauma survivor’s body, right? Because allowing anyone to see you may have been dangerous. And so being able to stay flat with your affect, being able to, right, look like you can manage everything, and what’s going on on the inside may not always match the outside.
Building Safety to Transform Coping
Julie: Yeah. And we spoke a little bit earlier, you specifically mentioned the diagnosis of being borderline. And how there’s really a very different way of understanding that. Or maybe even stepping away from the labels, which we’re super into here at Whole by Design, right? Because labels really reduce someone into a very small subset of what their symptoms look like, as opposed to looking at the bigger picture. So, can you tell me a little bit about how you see that label and what you kind of think about it, and how you work with it or not work with it?
Robyn: I think that the label, right, pathologizes people and pathologizes their best efforts to survive. And I think…
Julie: So, pathologize meaning like making someone into kind of less than or reducing them just to a diagnosis.
Robyn: Right, there’s something wrong with them.
Julie: Yeah.
Robyn: Right, and I believe that that’s actually not the case.
I believe that their brains, their bodies were amazing and survived so much more than many of us could ever imagine. And they found a way to exist, continue to live, and function.
And a lot of people are labeled borderline, which is not a term I love at all because their emotions are big, because they might swing from one to the other, because, right, they have a lot of protective parts, right? They have a lot of pieces of themselves they don’t wanna get hurt again. They don’t want to feel that pain. So a lot of times, they will leave first, they will lash out. And when trauma survivors feel unsafe, they are literally fighting for their lives, right? Fight, flight, freeze. And when they feel safer, the coping strategies, the survival mechanisms that they need, can also get toned down, right?
So, in working with trauma survivors on an everyday basis, the first and most important aspect of that is building safety, right? Consistency, honesty, authenticity, right? Noticing the space of the room, really doing what you say you’re going to do, right? Really being there and showing up. And I think for so many trauma survivors, they haven’t had that. Someone will say they’ll do something and they won’t, or they’re supposed to do something because of a role, and they do something that’s exactly the opposite, that’s hurtful, that’s painful.
And so I think we as therapists are in a beautiful place where we get to provide that safety, that showing up for someone, and really just helping them notice that when they show up, right? That’s all inside of them as well. So when we show up together in a way that feels safe, that communicates safety, that talks about the discomfort, and even talking about it is okay, then it allows them to do something they’ve never done before, which is be possibly in a safe relationship and figure out, oh, how do I manage my emotions? What do I need to do? Are these protective parts of me necessary in all of my relationships? Maybe not, maybe they were, maybe they’re not now.
Hope Beyond the Diagnosis
Julie: So could you, do you have a story that’s kind of top of mind where you can protect like client confidentiality or maybe make a composite of a few different clients together where you’ve seen someone who’s been given this label outside in the world and you’ve been in relation and watched it change? Because I think that’s a really important story. I think a lot of times people get caught up in a label, and some of these labels, that one in particular, by definition, you’re not able to change it, right? It’s a personality trait. And so I think that’s a really important message of hope for people that those labels don’t have to be the end of the story. And there’s plenty of people who don’t even ascribe to them in terms of the way they see the human experience.
Robyn: Yeah, I’m trying to think of how to put together some ideas without that having identifying information. I think it’s just important to notice, right? Clients who notice the longings, notice the black or white thinking, the either or, the extreme. I don’t like what you’re saying, so you must be hurting me, versus, I don’t like what you’re saying, let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about how it makes you feel. What do you notice, right? How can we talk about something that’s uncomfortable and still make it safe, right?
I think some people are so used to nobody caring about what they have to say or how they feel, or there’s just been no space for it. That’s how they’ve felt. So they don’t share those things, right? Whereas it’s important to me. I want to hear when you’re upset with me or angry with me because I’m going on vacation, or when you see me as someone really important, and maybe you don’t feel like I’m taking that into as much consideration.
And if we can talk about it, we can talk about how I am, and I know that this is gonna be difficult when I’m away, right, or when you leave my office and you worry that you can’t take this with you, right? How are you gonna manage that outside, right? How to build those tools, how to know that you can come back to it, right?
So therapy in and of itself provides that consistency of being able to experience something, leaving it, maybe trying it in your real world, coming back, having it again, right? It really helps heal by creating new neural pathways of what relationships look like.
Expanding Your Window of Tolerance
Julie: And so you’ve seen that happen with your clients where they come in pretty extreme about the way that they experience relationship ruptures or relationship challenges, and by the end have been much better able to tolerate disappointments that happen relationally and even communicate what their needs are.
Robyn: I think that it’s, I call it, right, expanding your window of tolerance, right? Being able to widen that space where you can manage those emotions, manage those situations, and know that you’re going to be okay, right? Most of my clients have been okay; they’ve survived. They have more skills than I do with regard to how to manage life and surviving.
I think the difference is moving from, shifting from survival to caretaking of self, living, and how to be able to shift that for yourself, that maybe taking care of you is important, right? Maybe it’s getting seen, finding those relationships where you’re heard, where you’re able to notice what you’re experiencing, where my clients can come in and, right, talk about, oh my gosh, I can’t barely breathe or, right, I can feel this in my gut and how the nervous system reacts to that, right? Because our nervous system has been kind of programmed with trauma at times when trauma happens so early, the nervous system functions that way, right? It knows that smoke alarm needs to go off at any time X or Y is felt.
Julie: Yeah.
Robyn: Not always discriminating around, right, is this dangerous now? Right, it’s, right, I smell that perfume, I smell that cologne and the activation of the amygdala, the nervous system happens to go to fight, flight, freeze, and, huh, I just walked past this person on the street and they were wearing that perfume or cologne, right? How to be able to reground and say, I’m safe, right? I’m okay, this is not 10, 20, 30 years ago.
Post-traumatic growth
Julie: So if I’m understanding correctly, it’s kind of like the body is built for survival and maybe it’s encoded all these different things that it saw as dangerous when we were little and it’s like, oh, this cologne means danger, oh, this sound means danger, oh, this relationship move means danger and it doesn’t change, right? It continues to have the same kind of hair trigger reaction, I think you said 10, 20, 30 years later when some of those things might not have been that big of a deal.
And I think you implied that within the therapeutic relationship, maybe there’s times when you go away on vacation and someone might have one of those really big reactions and because you’ve created this space and place and relationship safety that you’re able to look at it in a different way and help that person’s system adopt something new that’s maybe more adaptive to the present day, yeah.
Robyn: Yeah, yeah, right, it’s that post-traumatic growth, right?
Julie: I love that. Post-traumatic growth.
Robyn: It’s that idea that they’ve experienced that trauma and what happens after, right? When people show up in our offices and they are saying, right, I don’t wanna feel this way anymore, I wanna feel differently, is that possible? Yeah, it is possible, right? And what would that look like? What do they want it to look like, right? They don’t wanna go from zero to 60, right? That quickly, right? How to be able to slow that process down, how to be able to know they’re okay, right? To be able to go slower, nothing is happening currently, assumably in their lives that puts them in direct danger.
Julie: Yeah, I love that. I almost wanted to pause you right at that thing that you, brilliant thing that you said, which is that, hey, someone gets to that moment where they say, “I don’t wanna live this way anymore“, “I don’t want these things to happen“. They’re like, is that possible? And you say, yes, that is so major, yes.
I think sometimes when we’re living in our own experience, our own head, our own body, and it’s just like Groundhog Day over and over and over again, ah, people disappoint me, ah, no one’s there for me, ah, I’m all alone, oh, I’m broken, here it is. And it feels like that is the only reality that’s possible. And you are here to put a flag in the ground and say, it is possible, it is possible to change the way that you’re experiencing life. I think that’s amazing, I love that message of hope.
Robyn: Absolutely, that’s what we do. I’m not sure I could do my job every day if it wasn’t possible, right? To be able to see the growth, to see the change, to see the hope, to see where people go when they have the resources, when they feel safe, right? I think that people can go anywhere when they feel safe.
Julie: Yeah, so great. And I’m sure that sustains you, having all those stories of people who have changed, where they come in in a certain state and they change and are really reaping the benefits in their lives with relationships and their professional lives of being able to experience those kinds of changes.
Robyn: Yeah, that’s why we do what we do. That’s right, otherwise it wouldn’t feel so good. I can say, when people ask all the time, “How do you hold so much pain all day, every day?” First of all, I get the honor of being able to walk alongside, to show up for people who have never had anyone show up for them and or minimal people. And I get to be there. I get to show up, I get to see their pain, I get to help hold that with them. And I get to help hold the growth as they move forward, as they discover the, oh, I don’t have to feel this way any longer, right? I feel better. I feel different. I’m actually enjoying life. This is fabulous, right? That’s it. Those are the moments.
Julie: I love it. That’s so awesome. Well, we’re getting to that moment. It’s always so great to talk to you, Robyn. But as promised, we said that you have seen something over the course of your, how many years have you been doing this now?
Robyn: I don’t know, like 27.
Julie: 27 years, so almost three decades. What is one kind of commonality among people who end up in your therapeutic office? And I wonder if you could share a little bit about that.
Robyn: Yeah, I mean, I say this regularly. My clients would know this, be able to say this for me, but it is that people show up in therapy, people come to therapy when those coping strategies, when those survival mechanisms are no longer working for them, right? I’m doing the same thing, and it’s not giving me the same result as I had before. So when the coping strategies, the survival strategies, when they stop working, that’s when people start looking for something different, and that’s when the growth happens.
Julie: I love it. So it’s almost like if I picture, oh my gosh, coping strategies aren’t working anymore, I imagine life starts to get super unmanageable, like things are not working, things are breaking down, relationships, business, personal health, whatever it might be. And you’re saying, hey, yeah, all that stuff sucks and this could be just the opportunity where you can really start to change the paradigm you’ve been living with, move in post-traumatic growth.
Robyn: This is the moment of that decision tree, right? I go left, I go right. And I keep doing the same thing over and over, and it’s giving me the same result, right? Which isn’t working recently, or I try something different. And I get success, I get to feel good.
Julie: Ah, love that, get to feel good. So our bodies are really built for survival, and sometimes those survival mechanisms are for a past chapter and they’ve outlived their usefulness, and this is this great moment when the coping strategies are no longer working, that there’s real opportunity.
Thank you so much, Robyn, for joining me here on Whole by Design and for you listeners as well. I hope it left you feeling inspired to toss out the labels, embrace new perspectives, and take one step closer to the joy and clarity that you deserve. As always, visit www.vivapartnership.com to access our amazing free and low-cost resources that will empower you and your loved ones on health and healing.
Let’s spread the message, subscribe, review, or share this episode with someone who could benefit from a stigma-dropping approach to mental fitness today.
Robyn: Thanks, Julie.
Julie: So great to have you.
Robyn: You too, it’s so great to be with you.
